Anonymous

Anonymous

They were staring. And I hated it.

But you have no idea what I’m talking about, right? Right.

Here it is. A week ago, everything was normal, and I was just a kid. Some guy no one noticed. I liked that, I pursued that. I wasn't in the yearbook; not even my name, although I had to promise a huge favor for that. Come to think of it, they never collected… Anyway. I had no friends to speak of, but that suited me. I rarely spoke, teachers never even bothered to try to get me to answer a question. Total anonymity. No one looked at me twice, most people, not even once.

But a week ago, I caught a girl staring. Then another. Even just the two was unusual for me. I figured it must've been the way I'd dressed that day, I'd gotten a little bold, and moved a tiny bit out of my usual neutral tones. Not that I have any particular clothing style, I can honestly say I’ve never shopped for clothing anywhere that wasn’t a thrift store. (Well, unless I was going for socks and underwear. Some things are just too gross to even consider, you know?) It’s just my clothes are generally gray, brown, or black. My process for picking out clothing involved reaching into a basket of unfolded shirts, pulling one out, and wearing it with one of my three pairs of blue jeans. I don’t know that I even owned dress clothes, and while I ought to have looked rather out of place during the things like the early service on Sunday, I never got into any trouble or got any dirty looks. I’m getting off topic. The point is, I don’t dress to be noticed. Same thing that day, nothing fancy, but apparently the red I was experimenting with, (It’s hard enough finding clothes that fit me in thrift stores, I thought it might get easier if I branched out, color wise.) was enough to get me spotted. No big deal, right? I could fix that the next day.

And so, the next day, Tuesday, I made a conscious effort not to stand out. Walk quickly, but not too quickly, dodge and weave through a crowd, but don't show any grace or finesse. Avoid eye contact; don't speak in more than one word sentences. I was flawless, on top of my game. The master of attention avoidance.

But they were watching. They still saw me! A cheerleader here, a goth there, one of the art kids, two of the preps. More girls than yesterday. All looking at me. I didn't look any better than I did last week, did I? It could've been.

I wasn’t hugely attractive, standing at around 6’1, with a drooling volcano of reddish-brown hair which I kept as long as masculinely possible. That was about as exciting as it gets. My eyes are the standard, boring shade of blue you can find on lots people. If you’re in a room with more than ten others, take a look around, I’m sure you’ll find a similar enough specimen. I wasn’t particularly fond of my nose, as it was a bit big for my liking. It was actually kind of unattractive. Overall, I’d not changed much since last week. Still, being more unattractive was worth a shot.

The following day, I made an effort to look less… well, good-looking. I didn't shave, barely brushed my hair, that sort of thing. It didn't matter. There were more looking at me. At least one in every class, and at lunch, an entire table was watching. AN ENTIRE TABLE! AT THE SAME TIME! It was one of those nerdy book club tables, you know, where they chatter inanely about their latest fictional crush? That's what I was dealing with. That level of attention. After lunch, I saw groups of girls in the halls. You guessed it. They were staring at me as I passed.

Thursday, I stayed home, faking sick. Eager for a reprieve from all the eyes, I lounged about for a bit, surfing some channels. Made myself some breakfast. (I'm one of those people who believes in those breakfasts you see on TV, with the eggs, sausage, bacon, toast, cereal, one glass of milk, and one of orange juice.) I rather enjoyed the opportunity to relax without care, like how it used to be. But, for some reason, I was still uneasy. I watched some more TV, surfed the net, and finished a book, I'd been working through. At around noon, I heard the mail arrive, so I went out to check it. I never walked out the front door.

"I'll be damned."

There were skippers. You know, the kids who show up to class occasionally, but most days don't bother? They were on the other side of the street, in the field. STARING. AT. MY. HOUSE! Again, it was a group of girls. No men. I was really beginning to get worried. I'd managed to convince myself over the course of the morning that I was simply being paranoid, but this trashed that notion. They WERE watching. Why? I didn't know.

I slowly backed into the house, and locked the door. The gesture felt so feeble. I couldn't hide from anyone. They knew where I lived, probably even knew which room was mine. When I looked back out, I couldn’t see them, but it didn't matter, they were there. That brief, sweet feeling of calm was now gone. I dashed out to get the mail and ran back inside looking over my shoulder the whole time.

I'd have to go back tomorrow, I knew that much. My mother wouldn't let me go two days in a row without evidence of illness. Maybe I could get some fake vomit…? No. I'd need to leave the house for that, and the mall was the last place I wanted to go if I was aiming to avoid teenage girls. Besides, I was being ridiculous. So what if they stared? They couldn't do anything. At least, not with all those people around school. Funny that I'd be taking solace in the idea of being surrounded by people, given the way I like things to be.

The next day was hard. I was all set to force myself to ignore the stares most of the day, but during first period, we had an assembly. None of the girls were watching the speaker. Not one. They were all staring at me. None of the guys even noticed, and the speaker kept on talking, it was like it wasn't even happening. But I knew it was. As I ran out of the gym in the middle of the assembly, it was all I could do not to scream.

Now, you need to know, my second period doesn't have a seating chart, and I was running a little late, due to both time spent calming down in the bathroom, and from trying to avoid the big crowds that lately only seem to hold females. So, of course, when I arrived to class, there was only one seat left. Dead center of the front row. And you better believe the girls had shoved all the guys away from that spot and were sitting in all the surrounding seats. I was terrified.

Each class passed like that up till lunch, but no one commented on it. I was practically shaking in fear by lunch. I know I twitched at least once. How was no one seeing this? I grabbed my food, and went for my table, but it was full. Every table had at least a couple people at it. I don't know what your school is like, but at mine, that's never ever happened, EVER. Even so, there it was staring me in the face. I recovered quickly, and made towards the doors, thinking I'd eat outside, but I never made it that far. For every table I passed, one of the girls got up and asked me to sit with them. I hurriedly declined, of course, but by the time I was anywhere near the doors, I was so afraid that I was hyperventilating, and I passed out before I could make it.

Obviously, I woke up in the nurse's office, with said nurse smiling down at me.

"You are one popular guy."

"I try not to be."

She frowned a little at my words, but gestured towards a pile of flowers. "Girls have been leaving them since you collapsed. A couple of them were so worried they had to wait for you to wake up before they would go back to class. I'll let them in."

"Please no…" But she was already gone, and she left the door open.

Great. There were three of them. It looked like the set up for a joke, 'So, a cheerleader, a nerd, and a goth chick all walk into the nurse's office.' Ugh. And here I am, laying on this uncomfortable bed, most of my possessions in the doctor's custody. I wasn't going anywhere. Quite trapped.

The group was all rather stereotype-y, but I’ll go ahead and describe them anyway. The goth had dyed her hair black, with blue tips, and she was wearing a T-shirt with an ornate skull on it. Her cargo pants were torn in several places, but it had happened naturally, she hadn’t bought them that way. (Did you know you can do that? How ridiculous! Why would you pay for jeans with less structural integrity than they ought to have? Worse yet, they actually cost more!) She had several piercings on her face, including one through her eyebrow. Her red eyes were probably contacts, although for some reason that didn’t seem right.

The nerd didn’t venture much outside her clique’s clichés either. A Legend of Zelda shirt, some loose blue jeans, and even thick glasses. She had red, curly hair, and her eyes were green. Her backpack had all sorts of writing on it, most of which were likely in-jokes her friends put there.

The cheerleader was the one who veered the furthest from the stereotypes, she actually wasn’t blond. Her brown hair was relatively short, and she wasn’t even wearing a skirt. But that’s where it ended. She was easily the prettiest of the three, objectively, although I don’t usually like that kind of look. She was thin but muscular, and abnormally tall for a girl, although still shorter than me. As I mentioned, she wasn’t wearing a skirt. Instead, she had white capris on, and one of those shirts that shows a bit of your belly to everyone.

"Hi!" The cheerleader spoke first, and boy did she sure sound cheerful. Let's have a large group of men stalk her for a week, and see how she is then. "My name's Tammy!"

I ignored her.

The nerd tried next. "I'm Carla."

I turned to look out the window.

Then the goth. "I'm (deep breath) Anna-Sophia-Maria-Chelsea-Rebecca."

I admit, that caught me by surprise. I must have visibly reacted, despite my best efforts, because the other two smiled, and she kept on talking.

"Just making sure you weren't deaf. Name's Alyssa."

I was stuck. I'd already acknowledged them, if accidentally. I couldn't pretend they weren't here. That's sort of an all or nothing ploy, childish or not. But I wasn't making this easy for them, whatever this was. So I did the only thing left to me.

I silently stared. Turnabout is fair play after all.

A couple of seconds passed, and then the goth burst out laughing. The other two looked confused, but I guess she'd picked up on what I was doing. And she thought it was funny.

I sneered. I hadn't realized it yet, but this wasn't a one sided conversation anymore.

"You think this is funny?!"

"I think it's hilarious."

"Well, I think you're an ass."

"That's certainly true." She replied, grinning. It was then I realized she'd won. I was talking to her. Using big sentences. Conversing. Damn. "So, are you gonna tell us your name?"

"Go burn in a corner."

The nerd (Carly?) nervously shuffled up. "We already know it, but we're being polite." She seemed distressed that I wasn't cooperating.

"William." I said. I was getting sick of this already; I wanted it over with, whatever ‘it’ was.

Tamara (or something) spoke next. "Well, Will, we're…"

"William." I insisted, a little viciously. If they're going to stalk me all week they could at least get my name right.

"William," She continued, although she seemed unused to being interrupted. Must come with being popular. Cheerleaders are always popular, right?. "We're here with a proposition for you."

Alyssa interjected, "It's not so much a choice, as it is an opportunity to avoid us forcing you to choose correctly."

She was shushed by the nerd. Very loudly.

'Tamantha' continued. "We've noticed you're all alone. We've noticed you have no social life. You've got no friends. We're offering you that, along with protection and all the benefits that come with those things."

"I don't want any of that."
The cheerleader gasped, and looked vaguely horrified.

"Now who's being an ass?" That was Alyssa interjecting once more. She was consequently shushed by 'She-Carl'.

I growled at her, and she smirked.

"Anyway," Tammy (I've run out of joke names.) was trying to get us back on track. She still looked a little shaken by what I'd said. I guessed she was one of those 'Power of Friendship' types. Whatever. "We're offering you that, and all you have to do is agree to one thing."

"He won't do it. He'll chicken out." Again with that annoying goth-child. This time, though, Carla didn't say anything to her.

Now's where the conversation paused awkwardly. I guess I was supposed to ask what the condition was, but honestly, I wasn't interested.

Tammy affirmed my suspicions when she said, "Don't you want to know what it is?"

"Didn't you hear me say I didn't want any of that stuff? I was serious, you know. Why would I agree to some ‘condition’ I won't like, for a bunch of 'benefits', which, in my opinion, are anything but?"

Carla surprised me by be the next one to speak. Shout, actually. "You… You jerk! We're trying to beg so nice to you, why are you being so mean?!"

I just silently stared again. This time she caught it.

She blushed, "Oh, that's why. Still..." She trailed off; her tiny temper had apparently already run dry.

Tammy had gathered herself up, and was prepared to finish her speech. Before I could cut her off, she said something that shut me up. Something big.

"We want you to become a girl."

My mind froze. I was back to being horrified. A week ago, I wouldn't have believed it was possible, but now… well, even now, it was a stretch, but some small part of me believed that they could do it. After all, no one had noticed them staring at me all week long. That was practically magic in itself, so, why the hell not?

"Well, William?"

"…" Was my eloquent reply.

Alyssa was snickering again. "Look at his face! He's gone all white! Seen a ghost, Will? Your masculinity, perhaps?" If I had been on top of the situation, I’d have commented on that awful joke. However, I wasn’t. Obviously.

I never actually bothered answering Tammy or Alyssa. I simply waited a couple seconds and suddenly leapt off the bed, leaving my belongings behind. They were too surprised to chase me.

I was dodging and weaving through the halls. My years of avoidance had made me a master at it. If running through a crowd were a sport, I was grand champ material. All attempts to remain anonymous gone from my movement, I was pulling out the good moves. Leaping over crouching people, sliding down banisters, the works. But even as I went, I heard the whispers. I'd been hearing them all week really, they came with the stares. I was the talk of the town. Well, the female half. However, now I was listening to what they were saying. Actually processing the words, rather than tuning them out.

"Why's he running?"

"He couldn't've said no?"

"He'll be really pretty, I bet."

"And then we'll have a slumber party, and do each other's hair…"

"I hope he likes chick flicks!"

"…can't wait to teach the newbie how to shop!"

But the most disturbing thing was this one girl blocking my exit. She was pale, with black hair, but somehow she didn’t look like a goth. It might have been the lack of skull themed clothing, although she was dressed mostly in black. She looked almost as scared as I was. But she was afraid of me, of talking to me. Looking closely, she was actually really pretty. It seemed like she knew what I was thinking, because she started to blush. Her expression changed slowly to a small sad smile.

"I know what you chose. It's really too bad, we could've hung out all afternoon. Oh well, I guess I'll see you this weekend… You know something? We'll be best friends soon…"

If my face was already twisted in horror from earlier, that would have done it. I brushed past her, growing more and more frightened. I'd forgotten that they knew where I lived… Why did I think that tomorrow or Sunday would be safe?

I spent all that afternoon fortifying my house. I told my mom it was an extra credit project.

"Yeah, the bio teacher was talking about how zombies couldn't exist, and someone suggested this as a project.
You see, whoever makes their house the safest from zombies using only what they've already got gets a bonus test grade.”

She bought it, and even helped a little. (Can you believe that? She's really that gullible. Sad, right?) It took all night, and after we finished we took pictures, for the 'project'. I convinced her I'd take it down the next day, and so, she went to bed.

I took the opportunity to search the net. The net knows everything, and something like this must've happened before, right?

I bet you were thinking I didn't find anything, right? You'd be wrong. I managed, after some digging, to find a blog started a little over a week before. It was being written buy some guy who was convinced girls could use evil magic powers or something, and that they occasionally turned guys that no one really seemed to care about into girls, using that power. As I got further in, he became convinced they were after him. I could relate, even if some of what he was saying was a tad out there. Anyway, yesterday, they apparently hit him with the same proposal I got today. Girls had been commenting on all the posts telling him he was crazy, of course, but I knew different. The post for today wasn't up yet, and it was approaching midnight. I refreshed the page.

…

The blog… it was gone. Gone. Whoever wrote it had deleted it. The only thing left was a page apologizing for riling everyone up, and that it was all a joke. The writing style seemed somewhat different, though. I didn't buy it. They had gotten him. They must've. A quick search revealed that while there weren't any blogs talking about with what I was dealing with, there were at least twenty apologizing blogs that used to talk about it.

I take back what I said before. Up until this point, I'd never been truly terrified.

I couldn't sleep all night.

My mom left for work early Saturday, so I disassembled the door block to let her out. She didn't need to know I'd be putting it right back up. I had some leftover breakfast that I'd made Thursday, but it was no comfort. Imagine that, bacon, not a comfort! I was seriously stressed.

It was at this point I realized there was no way to escape. Even knowing they were coming this weekend, I was essentially doomed. I couldn't live in this house forever; I couldn't even leave these barriers up all day! And I certainly couldn't leave, not when half of the people my age were out to get me! Even if I fought them, I'd never be able to pass it off as self defense. No one would believe me. And, if those blogs were anything to go by, by the time I had definitive proof, I wouldn't care anymore. I'd even have been willing to kill to stop them, but would I kill every girl who looked at me funny, every girl I saw? What if they got my mom in on it? She's a girl. Would I kill her? No. No, I couldn't. Even if I could've, how would I explain that? They'd lock me away for sure. And then, maybe one day they'd let in a visitor. A harmless looking girl. And we'd walk out of there together, and spend the afternoon shopping.

I was well and truly screwed.

I heard them around eleven o'clock. I was just starting to think maybe they wouldn't show; that maybe I should relax and make lunch. But no, they were here. I looked for some kind of weapon. I wasn't going to just give up. Maybe if they saw I was serious they'd leave. I found one of those big shovels for digging holes, and decided it was better than using my hands. It was all I had.

I could hear their voices. I recognized Alyssa's snickering voice after someone tried the door.

"She's barricaded herself in." A roar of giggling. There must be fifty or more. I ignored the obvious pronoun jab. "Let's rescue the poor princess from herself."

I think I was nearing insanity at this point, because I couldn't resist. In what could be considered a life or death situation, I reverted to making jokes.

"Your princess is in another castle!"

That actually got a couple of good natured laughs and some remarks like: "Oh, she's funny!"

Alyssa, unsurprisingly, decided to play along. She knocked and said: "Little girl, little girl, let us come in?"

I responded, "You won't take the hair off my chinny-chin-chin!" What? It was obvious how I was supposed to reply. Giggles again. "I don't suppose there's any way to convince you to leave?" My voice sounded more desperate than I'd intended, I was going for 'calm and confident adventure hero', but I wound up with 'scared and pathetic child'.

A symphony of voices responded, and they had obviously practiced this; with, "I don't suppose there's any way we can convince you to come out?"

"Not on your lives. I guess it's gotta be this way then, doesn't it?" Again, my words were tough, but my voice was breaking.

"Yep." Again, they spoke in unison.

Then, that girl I ran into at the door before I left yesterday walked in. Yes, I said 'walked in'. As in, without opening the door. Like a ghost. Like magic. Shit, that blogger hadn't been lying. Girls did have some kind of weird powers! Even seeing the evidence before me, it sounded dumb. But there it was, happening. I couldn't just tell her that walking through walls was impossible, and she needed to go back out and try again.

The girl gave me her small smile, and mouthed, "Sorry." She promptly began disassembling my barricade. A quick look at the nearby windows showed I was surrounded. No exits.

Okay, I realize I've said this before, but THIS, this is the point where I became truly afraid.

I gave a couple of halfhearted swings at her with my shovel, which went right through her, before I dropped it, acknowledging it as useless against the coming onslaught, and I fell to my knees. She looked so sad to be doing what she was doing, but she finished her disassembly and showed me her smile once more.

"My name's Adelaide. Friends?"

She reached for my hand, and seeing nothing to lose, I reached back.

"Friends." I meant it too; any idiot could see she really was sorry for what was going on. Of course, I was still pissed, so I added, "And as a friend, I hate you."

"I know."

With my crude door barrier down, they flooded in, and Adelaide held me close.
I was in a nasty situation, and I had no more strength to fight. Adelaide, the girl who had, in the last two minutes, walked through a wall to dismantle my defenses, my last, brief hope, and had also become my very first friend, was holding me tight. It was probably as much to comfort me as it was to hold me in place. She was on their side, after all.

Anyway, back to the encroaching crowd. I was terrified of them, but intellectually even I didn't think they looked threatening. They were just a bunch of girls, after all. Some were pretty, some not, some short and some tall, but none particularly menacing. They moved through my doorway and into my living room surprisingly quickly, given their number and the size of the door. In no time they filled the room, leaving about a foot of space from me to them, all around me. Adelaide was just holding my hand at this point, but I wasn't going to get away, anyway, so it didn't matter.

Alyssa, Carla and Tammy stepped to the front (inside?) of the circle.
Alyssa looked down at me, and smirked. "I told you earlier; this wasn't really your choice. Now then, be a good little girl and don't resist."

Carla smacked her across the back of the head. "Will you quit it? He's obviously terrified, and he's not going anywhere."

Alyssa rubbed the back of her head. "Oww! That hurt."

I snickered. She shot me a glare. Yeah, we just can't seem to get along.

Adelaide spoke next. "Can we get this over with? He can't take much more, and neither can I." She squeezed my hand. I really wondered why it was she liked me so much. And, while I was at it, why I liked her so much.

"Yes, we can." That was Tammy, who had been silent until now. She'd been the one who'd thought I should've jumped at the chance to become a girl and have hundreds of friends. I still don't like the idea, but although I never wanted friends, I'm already liking having Adelaide to count on, and we've been friends for all of five minutes, so I'm wondering if the 'having hundreds friends thing' would be so bad. Maybe they could have saved me from this?

Carla was talking again. "Sorry for scaring the crap out of you yesterday." I believed SHE was sorry, but I didn't think Alyssa was. "We're all gonna move in close now, okay?" She made to step forward.

"Will you answer a question for me, before I'm gone?"

Carla stopped moving and she looked confused, "Gone? What do you mean?"

"Well…" I explained about the blogs I'd found online, about people who were going through the same thing I was, and how the blogs had been erased, and replaced with posts saying it was just a joke. I mentioned how I'd surmised that they were gonna screw with my mind.

I heard a choking sound. I looked back at Adelaide, and she had tears streaming down her face. "Sniff… No wonder you were so scared! It must've been awful! We're not going to do that to you!" She was back to holding me tightly. Her tears (and snot) getting my shoulder all wet.

I looked around, and even Alyssa looked shocked. Carla whispered at her, "You see, this is why we don't scare the crap out of people!"

Tammy was crying as well. "What…" she wiped her eyes, "What was your question?"

I had a lot of confidence back now that I knew I wasn't facing immanent brain death. "Why? Why do you need to do this?"

Alyssa answered my question, but she was looking at the floor, and she was hard to hear. "It's for your own good. You're an attention null."

"A what?"

"An attention null. Believe it or not, it's actually really difficult to even acknowledge you exist. That's why we've been staring all week; we had to while we were preparing this, just to remember you were even there! Didn't you ever wonder why you were alone all your life?"

"Um… not really, I just made the most of it."

"Alyssa," Tammy interjected, "You need to look back up, or you'll forget where you are again."

She did, and her face was all red and puffy. Was everyone in this room crying? Maybe they were all better people than I'd thought. Even Alyssa.

Alyssa continued, and made an effort not to sniffle. "You're one of the lucky ones, most attention nulls die shortly after birth, when they are forgotten by the doctors and their own mothers."

It was my turn to look shocked. Mom had always been distant, but was it really because she cared SO MUCH that she was piercing the attention thing? Was that the only reason she could see me at all? Was that why dad left? Was it my fault? No, I can't get into that now.

"But wait," I said, "If that's true, how come I can get grades and stuff?"

"Can we explain this later? Once we can actually focus?" That was just a random someone in the crowd. "I'm getting really tired of forgetting what I'm doing and trying to leave." Several people said, "Amen!"

"Good point." Tammy said tiredly, "Long story short, becoming a girl fixes the attention issue. And no, it's not because women crave attention. Only men can be attention nulls." I wasn't even thinking that, even given recent events, I’m not sexist. "Can we save the rest for later now that you know we aren't here to rape your brain?"

"…" It all made a sort of sense, but I was still conflicted, to say the least.

Adelaide whispered in my ear. "You can do it, William."

Sigh. Why do I trust her so much? "…Okay." I closed my eyes. Tight.

I heard them all step forward, and I flinched. Adelaide held me tighter. And then someone else was holding me, and then two more people. Soon I was in the center of one giant group hug. I opened one eye. All the girls in the room were in on this giant hug-fest, and what's more, they were all glowing. Their respective glows weren't all the same color, but when the colors all combined together it looked sort of pink.

Adelaide whispered again, "You need to finish it."

I wasn't big on hugs, but one doesn't argue with a room full of glowing girls, even if they were being relatively friendly. I was sure that would be common sense, were glowing girls to become a common thing. I carefully looked around, so as not to dislodge anyone, and I knew just who I had to grab.

As I wrapped my arms around her, I whispered in her ear, "I forgive you, Alyssa." I could tell by the way her body let go of all sorts of tension that it was exactly what she needed to hear. She'd been blaming herself for my terror. As if it was her fault.

I hadn't noticed it until now, but I was glowing as well, sort of. My light was a sickly grayish green. Even just seeing it for a split second, I knew there was something wrong with it. The ugly glow started to crack, though, just like a shell, and blue light shot out of the cracks.

I heard murmurs of, "It's working!" and "Alright!" That sort of thing.

The blue light finally broke out of the green, and the ugly light disappeared. But it wasn't over yet. My blue glow was getting really bright, and had almost filled the room, when the not-quite-pink of everyone else's combined glows flared up. I knew this was it for my time being a guy, but I felt so good having that green light gone, that I didn't exactly care at that moment. The blue light was getting impaled by the pink all around the room, and I started to feel really good.

Have you ever had a full body massage? I hadn't at this point, but later, that's what I'd compare the feeling to. My body felt all nice and tingly, the more the pink light over took the blue, the stronger the feeling got. The pink light grew until it was covering everything but me. I was still blue, but the light couldn't shine out of me anywhere.

I noticed it on my fingers first, I couldn’t feel them. I let go of Alyssa to take a look. She opened her eyes to see what I was doing, and smiled when she saw my fingertips were as pink as the rest of the room. The blue light was pushing back with all it had, and I got the feeling that if I tried, I could back the blue light up and it would win. However, that same feeling came with the knowledge that doing so would allow the green light to come back, and so I did nothing. The blue light flared, as if it were angry, and turned a deeper shade. Suddenly I really wanted to push back with the blue light. I held my ground, but it was extremely tempting. The pink was on my forearms now, and I could see the differences in size and shape it brought with it. I was equal parts afraid and fascinated. I'd have such small hands! If they were anything to go by, I was going to lose at least a foot! The blue light started to advance again.

"William! What's wrong?!" That was Adelaide, and her shout stopped the blue light, however, the pink wasn't going any further.

"I'm going to be so short!" I cried. This might not sound like a big deal to you, but my height was very important to me. I could've played basketball, if I could've gotten a coach to see me.

"You've got to stop fighting it! It hurts!"

That did it; I didn’t know why, but I couldn't hurt her, especially not over something so petty. The rest of the people here were important too, of course, but I was disproportionally worried about Adelaide, although, again, I wasn't sure why. I quit resisting and the pink light shot forward. I could feel the spots covered by the pink now. It was almost to my shoulders.

My arms were so tiny though…

"WILL!"

"Sorry!"

The pink light started on my torso, and I had to fight the urge to help the blue light again. I knew what was coming next. Sure enough, before long, the pink light was ballooning where the blue light wasn't. At least it looked like I'd be small there, as well. The light wasn't climbing my neck, but that made sense to me. I figured the rest of me needed to be covered before it could take my head. The pink didn't slow after my sudden 'development', if anything; it seemed to move slightly faster. That made sense to me, too. It's gotta be hard to be a masculine blue light when the body you're shining from has, well, such feminine attributes. I could only imagine what would happen what would happen when the pink took over the other area. Not that I'd have to imagine for long, because most of my stomach was pink at this point. I quickly reached the point where I assumed I had little time left. The pink light slowed drastically.

"What now?" Adelaide shouted between grunts of pain.

"I guess you could say the pink light's reached my 'critical mass' and the blue light doesn't wanna give it up!"

I heard a couple of pained chuckles in the room, but the atmosphere was thick.

"Will, either you help us out here, or we give up! This really hurts!" Alyssa yelled. “Push with us!”

Could I do that? Push with the pink light? It was covering most of my body, so I supposed it was possible. But could I do that to myself? There's a huge difference between having your masculinity taken, and throwing it away. I wanted to push back with the blue! I didn't want to work with the pink!

They were starting to scream.

I pushed.

All the way down to my ankles.

I started to shake. The blue was practically falling out of my feet. And I couldn't see it anywhere else. I was really scared, but the screams had stopped. I heard them crying in relief. Or was that me? I couldn’t see anything anymore, nothing but the blue glow originating from my face.

Regardless, I had done it. They weren't screaming anymore.

Someone wiped my face, and I thought I heard her, whoever she was, say, "Oh, honey…" but I couldn't see who it was through the blue light that was hanging onto my head. Apparently, the crying had been me, because I could feel how wet my face was in the spots that hadn't been dried.

Pink. It was snaking up my neck now. I tried to push back, to slow it even just a little, but I suddenly lost the ability to feel the blue and consequently my head, just like I couldn't feel the pink on my hands towards the start. Speaking of the pink light, I could feel as it skipped my face for the moment, instead going for my hair. It lengthened it, causing it to fall down my back, where it scratched a couple of itches on my shoulder blades. I could see the blue light coming from my face, but it didn't feel like the last part of me left was my face, it felt like I had a full body but I was missing a face. It was really creepy.

I felt my lips get smaller when the pink light overtook them, just like had happened with the rest of me, but they also felt fuller. Feeling both sensations at the same time was rather odd. Then, my nose lost a lot of mass. Knowing my luck, I probably had one gotten saddled with of those cute little noses.

As weird as it felt not having a face, not having eyes was even weirder. You know how they say the eyes are the doorway to the soul? That’s how it felt, like I had no soul, or something. But the feeling, while novel, was gone quickly.

It was finished, I was done. There was no blue left anywhere, and even the pink was fading. I was almost able to see some of the skin on my new arms. Hairless. Huh.

The pink light faded away completely, and my feet touched the ground. I hadn't even realized I'd been floating. I guess when I got shorter; I didn't stay on the ground.

I wasn't even on my feet for a second before I started to fall. Luckily, Tammy caught me. Must be all that cheer practice.

I was already mostly asleep, as I was suddenly completely exhausted, but I managed a, "Thanks, all of you…" before I passed out.

When I woke up, I was in my bed. I looked around, and the clock told me it was one o'clock, about two hours had passed since I'd last checked the time. I had no idea how long the actual change had taken, though, since my last clock check had been before the girls broke through my barricades. Speaking of which, the blockades on my windows, and presumably around the house, had been taken down. I'd have to thank the girls for that.

"Will! You're awake!" Three voices shouted in unison. I turned around, and there were Alyssa, Carla, and Tammy. But where was…?

Alyssa face-palmed. "Could you be any more obvious?"
I guess my worries were painted on my face. Or something. What can I say? I was worried about my first friend, last I’d heard from her, she was crying out in pain. Pain I was the cause of. Some friend I am.
Alyssa sighed. "She never left your bedside."

I turned around. Sure enough, there was a hand laying right about where mine had been. I scrambled across the bed and saw the sleeping body of Adelaide. I turned back toward the others, pacified, but I accidentally looked into the mirror. Drat. I'd forgotten it was there. Oh well, it's not like I could stop myself now.

I moved slowly, like a trance, and that disturbingly cute, depressingly short, and all-around little, brown-haired girl in the mirror did too. I was so small compared to my previous self that I was wearing one of my shirts like a dress. A short dress, sure, but really, that was worse, and not better. Short dresses were sexy.

Goddammit! I totally had one of those cute little noses I was so worried about. I tried to frown, but I just ended up pouting and the way my nose wrinkled was even cuter! Ugh. My eyes were largely unchanged, although they were a slightly lighter blue than they had been. My mouth, however, was completely feminine. I might as well admit it. No way these girls were gonna let me get away with not wearing lipstick when I had these lips. I was glad to see I had a relatively small chest, but my hind end was larger than I'd like. I looked like the sexy version of someone’s kid sister.

"If you're done trying to work out how to make out with your reflection…" Alyssa. Who else?

I shot her my best withering glare, but she just froze for a second and then started giggling madly, and the other two had to cover their mouths. Carla actually let out an "Aww…"

"I get it already! I'm ridiculously cute!" More giggles. Ugh. My voice was so…

I pouted again, which did nothing to lessen the laughter. Apparently, I was gonna need some serious practice in the mirror before I could use some respectable expressions. Alyssa rolling around on the floor was proof of that.

At least I wasn't really feeling any different, mentally. I still thought Alyssa was annoying, for instance.

"Hey! Alyssa!"

"Ha-ha… ha-ha-ha… What?" She managed to sit up straight enough to see me.

"You're an ass."

That one stopped both of us. The way my voice sounded when I swore…

Alyssa was on the ground, again, giggling hysterically, having a hard time breathing, and honestly?

So was I.

The sound of my own giggles kept me going a long time. I sounded so silly! Even Tammy and Carla gave up holding themselves back.

The loud noises must've eventually woken Adelaide, because suddenly I was accosted by a tackle hug from behind. We all started giggling. Again.

I guess I was right when I said I might've been wrong about friendship. It rocked. Giving up my manhood for this? Even I had to acknowledge it was totally worth it. Apparently, anonymity wasn't a good thing after all. Being lonely was actually kind of awful. Who knew?

The following Monday:
"Hey, Emily?"

I looked towards my very first and very best friend, as we were walking to our table where the others were waiting.
"Yes, Adelaide?"

"Look at the boys." She whispered, blushing.

I did.

They were staring. And I loved it.